Not me - I'm still a NOVID, but Chris has finally lost that status.

Having a positive COVID test in the house for the first time reminded me how things have changed since March 2020. For a start, in March 2020 when we locked down, there was no such thing as a RAT (rapid antigen transfer) test. If you got sick in those times, you interpreted whether you had COVID based on your symptoms – if you lost your sense of smell, you almost certainly had COVID.

Countries rapidly implemented centralised testing regimes for COVID, using DNA sequencing as the first approach. It now seems like a foreign land, the time when people went to COVID test centres, queued in their cars or with two metre separations to avoid spreading disease, had swabs stuck up their noses by people dressed in PPE, then waited twenty minutes for their result to be announced.

The first RAT test was approved for use in the USA by May 2020. However, home testing didn't become a norm until the latter part of 2021, when it was rolled out in many countries, limited by international constraints on supply of tests. New Zealand implemented RAT tests, but only at testing centres in the first instance. I remember Sarah visiting New Zealand from the UK in late 2021 and being  surprised people couldn't test themselves. We finally got home testing in February 2022.

In March and April 2020, not only were we centrally testing for COVID, many of us were washing our fruit to disinfect it and leaving our groceries outside for a few hours, on the advice of health professionals and as communicated by Siouxsie Wiles. The advice said COVID was transmitted through dreaded 'fomites' (objects which can carry infection). I wondered about touching metal or wooden surfaces when I went for a bike ride and encountered a locked gate. Were my bike rides legal? When we weren't supposed to be traveling long distances other than the necessary distance to get to a chemist or supermarket? Let's not go there.

As hard to believe now as it sounds, the importance of aerial transmission of COVID wasn't accepted fully by the World Health Organisation until late 2021. New Zealand health professionals pondered mightily about how COVID was transmitted between two people in managed isolation (how strange does managed isolation sound now, too?). CCTV footage showed the people had never crossed paths in their hotel. Theories were advanced about how the two people might have both touched the same lift buttons or virus been transmitted via rubbish bins. Everyone was looking in the wrong place because they didn't believe aerial transmission was possible. Once spread of COVID in the air was in the mix, it became obvious the virus was transmitted after the door of the COVID carrier was opened and closed, then the door of the COVID recipient across the corridor was opened shortly afterwards.

In May 2020, if Chris had developed a mild cough and said he felt like he was getting a cold, I'd have banished him to the far end of the house, closed two sets of sliding doors and slipped his food into the first one until it was clear whether he was getting COVID (and he'd have gone to be tested if his symptoms progressed). In 2024, I didn't pay much attention. Chris had just returned from Australia on a night flight. Maybe he was developing an infection. Maybe he was just tired.

Two days after Chris first got his cough, we drove from Christchurch to Gibbston. I didn't even think about this close proximity. It wasn't until late the following day, when his nose started to run, that he pulled out an old COVID test from where they are stashed in the back of the carport. "They're nearly expired," he said.

When Chris tested, the pink Test line lit up almost instantly (remember when we got confused about the 'C' line meaning 'COVID' rather than 'Control'?). The test wasn't expired, then.

Suddenly, I didn't want to be in close proximity with Chris anymore. He took himself off to the far end of the house whle I thought about our time in the car and sleeping next to him for the last 3 nights. However, it still didn't occur to me a mask would be a good idea until a whole day later (masks also retrieved from the carport). How could I forget so quickly after years of mask wearing? And feeling naked without a mask when I went to the UK in May 2020, when New Zealand was still all masked up while the UK had experienced 'freedom day' months earlier. I don't know how forgetting can happen so easily and rapidly.

It's now a week since Chris got sick. He self-exiled to our place in Christchurch because we have guests in our Gibbston house. I have spent the week being hypervigilant about potential symptoms – that hasn't changed from March 2020. Do I have a slight sniffle? A tiny cough? Am I feeling tired?

I remember early April 2020 when I realised, shortly after lockdown, we could have already been exposed to COVID. Mid-March, we were biking the Old Ghost Road staying in close proximity with them foreign visitors in huts. Were the cups properly washed in the huts? Highly unlikely! How long might incubation be? The information of the time suggested up to 14 days.

So there we were, locked down in Gibbston, potentially infected, with my mother. We'd brought Mum home, away from her retirement village, for her protection. We might have brought her to infection! I ducked into the bathroom regularly to secretly test my temperature, the only specific diagnostic measurement I could access at home. I didn't even tell Chris until the fortnight had passed.

Over four years on, I can still wear my NOVID status as some sort of gold star. Chris felt a bit disappointed to see the double lines appear on the test. However, it's quite likely I have had COVID, just without symptoms. I'm happy not to have had symptomatic COVID – I have a few friends with long COVID and don't want to join that cohort. What I have  got out of the last week, as opposed to COVID, is how much I've forgotten. How much we have all forgotten. I read my old blog posts and they're like visiting a foreign land.

Forgetting is heresy. Forgetting is survival.

COVID jokes are still funny.